The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2019–2025
Ben Holmen's Kilopixel lets the internet draw one wooden pixel at a time
A 1,000-cube display in Wisconsin flips one hand-turned wooden pixel at a time while anyone online submits and votes on what it draws next.
Ben Holmen
What it had to solve
Six years before launch, developer Ben Holmen wanted a large, inefficient display with a web interface that anyone could interact with. He was inspired by Danny Rozin's interactive mirrors and Tom Whitwell's e-ink SlowMovie, which played at 24 frames per hour.
How it works
Kilopixel is a deliberately impractical 1,000-pixel display: a 40-by-25 grid of wooden cubes in Ben Holmen's office in Wisconsin. Where modern screens refresh millions of pixels sixty times a second, Kilopixel flips one wooden cube at a time, roughly ten pixels a minute, so an image assembles slowly enough to watch.
Holmen spent six years on the build. An early wall-mounted XY-plotter gantry worked, but finding a pixel was the long fight: ping-pong balls deformed once holed and painted, Nerf balls grabbed the drive wire, and bouncy, wooden and foam balls were heavy, uneven or unprintable. In 2024 he pivoted to cubic wooden pixels he manufactured himself, drilling 40 holes in each of 25 shelves with a jig so the 40mm spacing never drifted across a row.
The finished display listens to an API: anyone can submit a 40x25 image or vote on submissions, the most popular image is drawn next, and a reciprocating 'pixel poker' on a CNC gantry flips each cube to black or white while webcams stream the process. Holmen's August 2025 Show HN drew 1,145 points and 144 comments, and the Side Project podcast interviewed him about the mechanism and the community it attracted.
Why it lands
- The constraint is the concept: one pixel at a time turns waiting into the experience, which is what makes a wall of wooden cubes feel like live performance rather than another screen.
- Opening the queue to the internet gives the object endless content, because strangers compete to see their artwork physically materialize and vote to decide what draws next.
- Failing through a dozen pixel candidates taught Holmen to manufacture the pixel himself, and hand-making 1,000 cubes became the project's signature and its proof of commitment.
- Streaming plus per-artwork timelapses make a one-person office build legible to a global audience, converting six years of solitary work into a shared event.
What it did
Launched as a Show HN on 4 August 2025, the post drew 1,145 points and 144 comments; anyone can now submit a 40x25 image or vote at kilopx.com, and the winning artwork slowly assembles on the office wall while the process streams online.
What you can take
Make the constraint the content: a display that changes one pixel per turn turns waiting itself into theatre, and handing the queue to the public makes a private object a shared one.
Since then
After launch, Kilopixel kept running in user-submitted mode with deliberately light moderation: submissions require a Bluesky login and Holmen built a quick-delete path instead of locking the board down. He has floated handing control to an internet friend once interest fades, with the display's final home behind his webcam so anyone on a video call could change his background. The Side Project episode 'Kilopixel with Ben Holmen' documents the engineering decisions and the online community that gathered around the machine.
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